The state of New South Wales in Australia launched a strategy to encourage the public and private sectors to encourage geospatial datasets created by government agencies. The NSW Location Intelligence Strategy (PDF) provides the details, but here's the vision statement:

Our vision is to maximise the value of location intelligence in decision making, planning and service delivery for the benefit of the NSW Government, industry and communities.

The NYC Department of Transportation is crowdsourcing and mapping dangerous corridors, wide pedestrian crossings and bad driving behavior on a new interactive website launched last week. The website, visionzero.heroku.com, received 570 comments in its first day and is part of the Vision Zero safety initiative from the city. The map uses OpenPlans' ShareAbouts tool and OSM.

Apparently, attendees just listened to speakers at the conference, sponsored by the URI Coastal Institute and URI Environmental Data Center, and the R.I. Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA), R.I. Division of Planning and R.I. Geographic Information System. Sample maps noted in the article labeled both maps and apps. What's the difference? An app uses a story map template and a map just uses ArcGIS Online.

More London Parks on the Map

An online map of London parks has been expanded across the capital.

'Parklife London', first launched in 12 inner London boroughs, has now been extended to 20 boroughs across the capital covering 2,300 parks.

It's location-based so shows you parks near you. It's from the City Bridge Trust, a charity.

It's part of the trails new emergency marking system, put in place after two years of planning. Officials say the numbers act like a street address at your home. Dispatchers use numbers on the trail to pinpoint where you are on the trail so that first responders can get to you quicker and easier.

Using 311 App in NC

Between August 2013 and last month, 458 items have been reported to Salisbury, NC's 311GIS, according to the city’s GIS coordinator Kathryn Clifton. The system, currently in a free pilot, has 190 registered users, including 146 residents and 44 city staff members. The population is about 33,000. Most interesting, however, is the top ten list of complaints.

10. Animal carcass in the road (nine reports)

9. Broken or uneven sidewalk (10)

8. Pick up bulky items (12)

7. Trash not picked up (12)

6. Illegal dumping (14)

5. Overgrown grass (14)

4. Large pile of limbs (19)

3. Abandoned housing/bad housing (22)

2. Pothole (29)

1. Street light out, damaged or flickering (225)

The city will soon decide if it will fund a subscription.

SMS Warnings for Rwanda

Rwanda through Ministry of Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Affairs (MIDIMAR) is doing final tests on the use of mobile phone short messaging service (SMS) to alert the public about imminent disasters.

It's not clear how of if the alerts will be addressed to specific geographies.